Chapter Eleven

I stood amidst the ruins of a once great city now turned monster den, bullets flying as cartridges hit the pavement. The minigun in my hands was smoking as it started to power down and melt from the excessive heat. With an aggravated scream I jammed the melting gun barrels into a monster's face. The smell of boiling flesh and blood filled the air as I stored the gun. Switching to War Crime and a MP5 I continued my slaughter. That fuckers eye's tracking me in the fog covering the city waiting to strike.

It's translated taunts fuel [Berserker] and [Psychosis] with [Sociopath] activated. PTSD flashbacks fueling my anger and mentality breaking over prolonged exposure to the skills. Dragging me back to warzones, back to the isolation of a soldier trapped within their memories. A barrage of feathers impaled me through the chest from behind but I only growled.

"Come on OLD GOD, you can do better than this even without your tricks. Show me a good time before I take over your body as my new vessel."

"FUCK YOU YOU DAMNED GUARDIAN FLAUNTING AS A GRIFFIN!"

<<Suna POV six days ago>>

After we had left the guild we had just stepped foot outside the city gates to return to camp. When Kaiser had suddenly stopped with his body turning gray and vanishing suddenly. Fenris clutched her chest as she fell over in pain in her wolf form. The usually boisterous monster twitching from pain before it stopped as it suddenly began. Before I could ask what's wrong she shot up onto her and tried something. It didn't work and that made her show fear.

"No no no no no no it's gone, he's gone, my link was severed! SoMeoNe StoLe my LocKHart, SomEOnE SeVERed mY mArK!!"

Although she growled in the monster language and in common at times, black smoke tried erupting from her before being sucked back inwards. Backing away slightly from the black plagued smoke I watched Fenris mumble to herself before calming. A blood red light mixed with purple enshrouding her frame before disappearing.

"Thank you Locky wherever you are… my Eilífur Félagi, stay safe…"

"Are you alright Fenris?.... Is he safe?"

"I'm not alright Suna, he was just here now he's gone from my reach again after five hundred years… but the title Eilífur Félagi we, and you should share helped calm me. He's safe for now wherever he is. But I can not go to his side. The void has been cut off from tracking him…."

"Let's go back to the camp and wait for the pup to come out of the city. He may be able to help us even though he seems pretty dense."

"I could use some rest after what just happened when he was suddenly taken…"

"What did happen when you suddenly started having that… pain and fear."

"VOID BOSS OLD GOD DECEASED, EILIFUR FÉLAGI DECEASED, VOID MARK FORCIBLY DESTROYED, RAGE OF THE PLAGUE TRIGGERING, VOID BOSS OLD GOD ALIVE, EILIFUR FÉLAGI ALIVE, RAGE OF PLAGUE CANCELED, CAN NOT LOCATE EILIFUR FÉLAGI…. So many messages from the system at once…. Locky DEAD for just a few seconds…. No way to track or go to him…."

"Lets go rest Fenris sweetie… you need to relax."

She didn't even spare me a glance. She just trudged into our camp numbly… plants died where her paws stepped. Whining softly I followed after the depressed monster of plagues. Watching her plop down curled in a ball as plants around her died. The mighty Fenris burying her head into her paws… crying and begging silently.

"This… this is an abnormal attachment even for a crush given her status…"

<<Fenris POV Present day>>

My body trembled as pain flooded through my limbs at times before fading. I can feel an exhaustion that's not my own. Then nothing… This has been going on for six days now. The title we share wouldn't be this personable. The void is unable to do anything still, that useless samurai has been no help. Sighing tiredly I looked around the city from atop a building I had climbed. The only thing I know for certain is that what happened was somehow done by a Guardian.

The other voids being just as lost on what's happened to Lockhart. That idiot though with Suna and Millie's help, may the void help that child, had picked up a probable clue during one of our daughters visions. But what she saw had the poor cub have a panic attack as it wasn't a great prediction.

— — xx — —

"Fog… monsters… deserted city… blood and bodies everywhere…. Metallic objects liter a street with remains of broken weapons. Father against a house bleeding and mangled but fighting a monster. Feathers riddling his body… screaming about… body? Won't last much longer…."

— — xx — —

After that little sight into what's going on with him Millie had a panic attack. She managed to claw Shin's face a few times before she was knocked out. But it would explain something about where he ended up, which is a Sacred Palace. An old city from before the Dusk of Majesty, a main city for the Player's to gather in. While asking around and some help from Tombstone we learned about the closest ex-Player city turned monster den. Tombstone said it had become unusually active meaning something was going on inside.

A pain assaulted my stomach suddenly with claw marks bleeding through my shirt. It hurts like a fucking bitch and has me very worried but a skeletal hand reaches out from my trench coat and fixes the damage and eases my worries. The voice of my fellow void speaking softly from all around me in the void between realities.

"This is a rather dangerous double edged blessing of the void for you two. But the fact actual life will be born between a monster of the void and one of the Old Gods. Is something we all are intrigued and worried by, we are deaths guillotine not life bringers. So I will admit our dear sister you two have put us all in a new but amusingly anxious state of mind."

Chuckling softly I placed a hand over my stomach and asked my brother curiously.

"Gleymi, do you have any idea what's going on with me? You mentioned the voids blessing."

My brother laughed genuinely for the first time in eons with his voice hinting at amused sadism but affection.

"It's simply marvelous! Due to the Old God using that strange ability of his on you the void flashed briefly a few times. Golden runes of light coursing through it as if the void was ASKING something to the power. My best guess is that your little rutting the Old God like a bitch and screaming your creepy love so much AMUSED the void. So as you have tied the knot, created life from the void, from the END OF LIFE with this trick. It has blessed but cursed you a deep bond. All for the simple reason of those six lives inside you now."

"Hmm but Suna has also technically created life with the void so why is she not feeling what I am?"

"Hahaha dear sweet stalker of a sister that child and the lives inside her are touched by the void. NOT blessed by it but it will most certainly try to protect them, as you two have as I said made life from the END OF LIFE, the road which all come for judgement for heaven or hell…. Or to become a monster of the void with nothing left of themselves."

"... You hurt my brain speak dumb for me."

"HOW do I hurt your brain yet you listen and understand EVERYTHING your new bonds say?"

"Suna is shy and explains things pretty well, Kaiser may be hard to understand to most but I see the scars, the pain, now I feel everything. He's not the most stable but his jargon and knowledge can be confusing to most. I have spent over twenty years with him even before the game launched. He put so much care and planning into each of us, he wasted days of sleep just creating and making us hard but not invincible to the Players. The same people who treated him a criminal, the same Players added more scars to such a soul. Who did his best for us given his trauma that can trigger at random from just a simple knock on the door.

He who has confided in me a lot during the Death Game, has explained many things to me. Given me many things and now has given me a very new experience, a life outside being a Boss and lives to look forward to. So even if you will not get it just now, he has given us everything he could. There's a song he sang one night thinking we had all fallen asleep. His voice so hollow and distressed as he sought the words."

".... I can follow you a fraction in that he has given us a lot, and has some trauma's even we find unpleasant. It is why Rusty and Dusty were much more active during the Death Game as they gained sentience and semi-free will. They like you seem to know him better than the rest of us, it is displeasing given he is essentially our father. But what is this song? Could you sing it from memory for me?"

"Alright though I don't think I'll express just how he sounded."

"This is fine my dear sister, I wish to gain insight into him where I can."

Clearing my throat my body stings from pain as my muscles lock up a little. An electric guitar as my beloved friend and mate liked to call it now rested in my hands. The musical instrument was modified and strengthened for my use as I tuned it before beginning. The slight feeling of something kicking my abdomen made me chuckle softly.

"I'm not alright, I'm still stuck in the conflict zone

I go back every night you fall asleep

With that smile on your lips as you lay beside me

I am not a man of virtue or ideals to be longed for

I am but a soldier with a chipped soul and mind

My heart may beat but I'm so so dead inside

You sleep so soundly by my side as I kill myself every night

Picking up the pieces to try and stay sane enough for you

But my body is tired, my mind burning fumes, my soul aching for relief

I'm a broken soldier of war, a soldier sent into dens of humanities monsters

Forged by blood and death I'm a monster to end the lives all opposition

Yet here you lay soundly at my side

Something so innocent and lost to my broken mind

Even though I no longer life fighting a death match

I can not escape the fire fights, bullets streaking like lightning passing me by

So many brothers and sisters I've buried

So many I've killed just to keep the peace another day

I am a phantom I enter the fight and leave silently

But the fight doesn't leave me, its haunting me every day

You wait patiently for my broken self to express something

But I'm afraid… afraid of the things that may slip out

You sleep soundly while I'm killing myself at night

You express joy while I can only be pessimistic….

I want to nurture that smile you express towards me

But I'm scared I'll lapse and snuff your life out

If this love only exists inside of my broken mind as a daydream

Don't drag me from it… I need it to trudge on another day

There's so much life around me but I feel so dead surrounded by it

Don't wake me up, don't wake me up

Don't wake me up if the smile and love you show are a dream

I just need what little support I can find to stay trudging on

Fight another day, kill another life

Fight another day, kill another life

A cursed loop I'm still stuck in inside my head

Burying my brothers and sisters in arms, constantly in my memories

I'm so full of knives and bullets weighing me down

Scars etched into my flesh, burns festering scars into my flesh

Yet I trudge on dripping my life onto the ground

Gun in hand as its all I can truly find a safety in

If your loves a dream don't wake me up….

Because I'm ready to give up my dying march

My feet feeling heavier by day as I march on

Haunted by the memories of war and death

Of being alone coming back from hell….

So please, please don't wake me up if the love is a lie its my dying ember….

I shot for the sky to keep the peace another day~!

But I'm coming crashing down bloody and dying

My scars will never heal but I bear them with a pained smile~!

So don't let this dying ember of painful hope

Be lie because I'm so close to falling onto my knees finally

My blood staining my body and the ground I walk

But I trudge on for this one small hope….

A hope my broken existence needs to not finally snuff out…."

My voice cracked during the song several times. I remembered the faint sounds of liquid and smell of blood in the air. The trembling body of a man facing a fire with a smell of desperation. My friend expressed his brokenness and vulnerability to the darkness of the night. He has certainly expressed his previous time as an elite soldier to us all before. But with a joking brave front not that broken and afraid side that I saw for the first time TRULY. While I like to think I know him, I had never really seen everything.

That sight that night after Shin had arrived made me realize what I never could. Not while the world was a game. The man I found a longing and kinship for, was so very in need of help. Help none of us are sure we could or can offer the ex-soldier. But I have a hope that his fears will fade with what is coming, give him a reason to heal and pull the knives from his body. My brother who had been silent spoke, his voice uncharacteristically very tender for once.

"You have eternity cut out for you my dear sister but you're a stubborn woman. Look out for him and help him remove the knives from himself. Your abhorrent obsessive love for such a man is something he sorely needs in this life. Take care of yourself and those lives, we all will be watching Fenris."

With that the feeling of the void being disturbed ebbed away slowly. As it did so the screams of one annoying child could be heard from below. Looking down I snarled at Shin and solely him, not his Elemental Tails partner or the woman beside him. He kept screaming up at me so I begrudgingly descended from my spot by pushing off. Void essence wrapping around me before I stand on the ground gently suddenly. Shin looked sheepishly at my expression.

"Sorry… heard you and figured you'd want to head to the palace with us. You could ask for permission to legally go to the Sacred Palace to find Kaiser then."

"... For once I don't feel like making you eat dirt. Lead the way CHILD."

Shin chuckled sheepishly and motioned for the female human to lead on. The female human looking amused and intrigued by our interaction. But I will not humor her, I only want to find my Lockhart. So I followed in relative silence as I still carried my guitar openly. Shin's monster partner noticed this and asked me about it with simple childish curiosity. I growled silently with a rumble of my throat before sighing and answering the weakened Divine Beast.

"This is something my mate had modified for me just before his abrupt abduction. Even though I can feel his pain and exhaustion for some reason. The sentiment of the action since I expressed interest is comforting. Calming, allowing me to think about things lest I let rage out and drown everything in plagues. Along with the lives he has literally blessed me with."

The small fox blinked at me before releasing a giggle as she hoped I would find him. The Human female looked back at me softly with her eyes as she spoke softly with a smile on her lips.

"You will find him, he is still fighting, yes? Then trust his tenacity to continue till you can help him. You are his eilifur félagi? As Shin has told me about you. So trust in him and you will find him bloodied but alive. That I am quite jealous that you seem to love this man this deeply while I'm single."

My lips part to answer just a pain shoots through my left shoulder. I feel as if I had lost my arm but it's still there, yet the feeling of it being destroyed was so vivid. My eyes dilate slightly with a whine escaping my lips knowing what had likely just happened.

"He lost his entire left arm…."

My words cause Shin to stop and turn around, his face scrunching up in disbelief. His fox companion was also one of confusion as her eyes widened.

"He's a game dev, an Old God! He should be using his cheats to be alright! What the hell is he fighting that can bypass that?!"

"Something that never existed before in the game. A Guardian that came after the Dusk of Majesty…. The thing that was very likely and now has certainly taken my love."

"Sorry your majesty but can we please hurry then? I don't feel like getting nuked by an angry and depressed plague wolf. A pregnant one at that."

"I will have to agree then, time is now pressing. We must hurry to see my father. So let's make haste before he dies!"

I all but bulldozed my way through the city to the palace while carrying the others suddenly. Please don't get taken from me Lockhart…